In the Studio: This Must Be the Place – Freddy Rodríguez

Freddy Rodríguez in conversation with Carla Stellweg, art historian.

Join us live on Instagram from your phone, or watch on YouTube after, for a series of conversations with some of the artists of This Must Be The Place: Latin American Artists in New York, 1965-1975 to bring Americas Society's Visual Arts public programs to your home. Every other Wednesday this month, artists will dialogue with our guest host Carla Stellweg, to talk about their work and practice.

About the artist

Freddy Rodríguez was born in 1945 in Santiago de los Treinta Caballeros, Dominican Republic. Feeling his life was in danger due to the local political climate, he moved to New York City in 1963. Rodríguez proceeded to study painting at the Art Students League and at the New School for Social Research. He also studied textile design at the Fashion Institute of Technology. While Rodríguez’s early artistic experiments engaged with minimalism and geometric abstraction, by the 1980s he had become more interested in realism and abstract expressionism. Eventually, the artist began fusing conceptual and stylistic elements from New York School painting with Dominican history, Caribbean culture, and transnational issues – using geometry and color to reference subjects generally considered at odds with pure formalism. Themes addressed within Rodríguez’s work include the conquest and colonization of native people by Europeans, the figure of the “cimarrón,” Catholicism, the dictatorship of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, and baseball.

About the guest speaker

Carla Stellweg is an independent consultant specializing in Latin American and Latinx art and artists. Throughout her career, she has worked as a museum and non-profit director, writer, editor, curator, and professor. Carla is considered a pioneer promoter and facilitator in Latin American international contemporary art. She was and continues to be instrumental in introducing many young and mid-career artists from Latin America, Latinx-U.S., Cuba and the Caribbean producing conceptual, socially-engaged art in both new and traditional media, either working in New York or from around the world.Along with the collectives Museo Latinoamericano and MICLA, many of which are exhibited in This Must Be the Place she created the artist book Contrabienal in 1971 in response to an international call to boycott the XI São Paulo Biennial in protest of the censorship and torture in dictatorial Brazil.

Visit the Americas Society Visual Arts YouTube Channel for recordings of In the Studio Series and other previous events.

Follow the conversation on Instagram: #IntheStudioAS | @americassociety.visualarts

More digital content from Visual Arts at Americas Society:

• Check out the current exhibition This Must Be the Place: Latin American Artists in New York, 1965–1975 and read the exhibition catalogue.
• Check out the current iteration of our Flag Series: Felipe Mujica — Estrella Distante.
• Read about the previous exhibition Terence Gower: The Good Neighbour.
• Read the exhibition catalogue for Joaquín Orellana: The Spine of Music.
• Watch videos of recent events:
  • Terence Gower: The Good Neighbor
  • Terence Gower and Mexican Modernism
  • Reflections on Joaquín Orellana's Marimba Imaginaria
  • In Discussion: Presenting Biennial FEMSA XIV
  • Art at a Distance: Promoting Visual Arts during the Health Crisis